Placeholder text

Go to cart

Byron and the Poetics of Adversity

By Jerome Mcgann

Byron and the Poetics of Adversity Poetry

Byron and the Poetics of Adversity

0 - Default Title
Description
A long line of traditional, often conservative, criticism and cultural commentary deplored Byron as a slipshod poet. This pithy yet aptly poetic book, written by one of the world's foremost Romantic scholars, argues that assessment is badly mistaken. Byron's great subject is what he called 'Cant': the habit of abusing the world through misusing language. Setting up his poetry as a laboratory to investigate failures of writing, reading, and thinking, Byron delivered sharp critical judgment on the costs exacted by a careless approach to his Mother Tongue. Perspicuous readings of Byron alongside some of his Romantic contemporaries - Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley - reveal Byron's startling reconfiguration of poetry as a 'broken mirror' and shattered lamp. The paradoxical result was to argue that his age's contradictions, and his own, offered both ethical opportunities and a promise of poetic - broadly cultural - emancipation. This book represents a major contribution to ideas about Romanticism.
Product details
Binding:
Paperback
Edition:
1
Number of Pages:
228
Release Date:
2025-07-10
Publication Date:
2025-07-10
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
1009232932
ISBN13:
9781009232937
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
247 g
Height:
120 cm
Width:
190 cm
Thickness:
14 cm
Buy on Amazon
Currently sold out